Experts and superforecasters consistently underestimated AI progress by years
emollick · x · 2026-09-24
FRI's analysis of forecasts collected mid-2022 and revisited in mid-2025 finds experts—including economists, computer scientists and biologists—consistently and dramatically underestimated AI progress:
- Most forecasters underestimated AI performance on MATH, MMLU, and QuALITY by mid-2024;
- AI reaching IMO gold-level performance in July 2025 came 5 years earlier than the median expert prediction and 10 years earlier than the median superforecaster prediction;
- When asked in September 2025, superforecasters gave only 1.7% odds of AI resolving a Millennium Problem by September 2026; optimistic industry experts gave 4.6%;
- Forecasters also greatly underestimated AI lab revenue.
Ethan Mollick quotes the thread, noting "stuff is happening quite fast."
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